ALN has released a statement protesting the continued arbitrary detention of lawyer and anti-discrimination activist Hejaaz Hizbullah in Sri Lanka.

You can read the full statement below and in PDF format here. 

ALN Protests the Continued Arbitrary Detention of Lawyer and Anti-Discrimination Activist Hejaaz Hizbullah in Sri Lanka

30 July 2024

On 26 July 2024, the trial in Sri Lanka of Hejaaz Hizbullah, a lawyer and activist for Muslim rights, resumed after being delayed by the prosecution on 17 May 2024.[1] The delay follows a pattern of witness pressure, delays, and judicial harassment against Hizbullah, which itself is part of a broader trend by Sri Lankan authorities of increasing discrimination, harassment, and restrictions on the civil and political rights of ethnic and religious minorities since 2019.

As a lawyer since 2012, Hizbullah has been a lawyer at the Supreme Court and a state counsel for the Attorney General’s Department, with expertise in constitutional, contract, employment, human rights and property law.[2] He is well known for serving as legal counsel to victims of discrimination, harassment, and Islamaphobia, in particular hate speech and hate-based violence against Muslims, as well as for his activism and advocacy for the rights of the minority Muslim community in Sri Lanka. He has been involved in interfaith and reconciliation activities and has served as president of Save the Pearls, a charity focusing on empowering vulnerable children at risk of trafficking through education.[3]

Hizbullah was arbitrarily arrested on 14 April 2020 by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) under the 1978 Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), initially without knowing the cause of his arrest, and he was denied access to legal counsel for the first eight months of his detention.[4] The PTA has long been criticized by human rights lawyers and organizations for being overbroad and facilitating rights abuses by the government against ethnic and religious minorities.[5]

The conditions of Hizbullah’s arrest indicate its arbitrariness and political motivation. In April 2020, Hizbullah had criticized the government’s decision to ban the Muslim practice of burying their dead and require them to cremate their remains, which violates their right to freedom of religion.[6] Notably, the WHO guidelines for the handling of human remains following Covid-19 illnesses allows for both burial and cremation. The day after his criticism, the Ministry of Health advised Hizbullah in a call to remain at home, as he may have contracted Covid-19. Shortly thereafter, the CID searched his home and office; seized his phone, laptop, and documents; questioned him about his phone contacts; arrested him; and warned family members not to ask questions when they asked to see an arrest warrant. Two documents that were taken related to a District Court case involving the properties of a client, Yusuf Mohamed Ibrahim. Mohamed Ibrahim is the father of two bombers who participated in the Easter bombings on 21 April 2019, in which three churches and three hotels in Sri Lanka were bombed by Islamic terrorists, killing over 250 people. However, there was no evidence of any connection between Ibrahim and the bombings, and Hizbullah’s links to Ibrahim were within the scope of legitimate legal representation. There were also allegations that the charity for which Hizbullah served as president, Save the Pearls, supported a school teaching “extremism” and “weapons training” to students, although evidence was never gathered to substantiate the allegations. Hizbullah’s family and civil society immediately criticized the arrest as politically motivated based on his legal work and advocacy for Muslim minorities.

Hizbullah’s arrest came in the context of a campaign by the majority Sinhalese Buddhist-nationalist Sri Lankan authorities to harass, suppress, and restrict the activities of religious minorities since the Easter bombings. Following the bombings, there was a wave of anti-Muslim sentiment culminating in the November 2019 presidential election of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a Sinhalese Buddhist-nationalist who throughout his 2019-2022 term took measures to protect and promote the Buddhist character of the state typically at the cost of Tamil Hindu and particularly Muslim rights and interests.[7] In October 2021, Rajapaksa appointed as head of a presidential task force on legal reforms the Buddhist monk Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara after pardoning him for a contempt of court conviction. Gnanasara is the leader of the anti-Muslim advocacy organization Bodu Bala Sena (Army of Buddhist Power, or BBS) known for inflammatory and hate speech against Muslims that helped incite inter-communal violence in 2014 and 2018.[8] Under a campaign of combatting “Islamic extremism”, authorities then implemented numerous policies that directly discriminate against the Muslim minority, including prohibitions and restrictions on Muslim womens’ attire, such as niqab (full face covering) and abaya (full length dresses), restrictions on importing the Quran and Islamic books, prohibitions on Islamic tv channels, restrictions on access to Hindu and Muslim religious sites and practices such as the aforementioned burial restriction, the removal or destruction religious artifacts, and the arbitrary confiscation of Tamil Hindu and Muslim land in land grabs.[9]

Hizbullah was initially held for 90 days under a detention order under the PTA by President Rajapaksa, despite the law only authorizing the Minister of Defence to issue such an order.[10] The PTA allows a terrorist suspect to be detained for 90 days under a detention order, which can be renewed for additional 90 day terms up to 18 months.

The PTA has been used in numerous previous cases of arbitrary arrests and disappearings of activists under the pretense of terrorism in Sri Lanka, such as three student activists arbitrarily detained for their involvement in organizing protests in Columbo against the Rajapaksa administration on 18 August 2022, Wasantha Mudalige, Hashan Jeewantha Gunathilake, Galwewa Siridhamma Thero, who were similarly held for over five months without evidence or the possibility of bail, generating widespread condemnation including by the Sri Lankan Bar Association and Human Rights Commission and their eventual release on lack of evidence.[11] The poet and teacher Ahnaf Jazeem was also arbitrarily detained under the PTA on 16 May 2020 for almost two years for allegedly teaching students extremist ideas,[12] and nine people were arbitrarily detained for commemorating war dead in the town of Batticaloa in November 2023.[13] As mentioned above, the PTA has been heavily criticized as over-broad and undermining the rights to fair trial and freedom of expression, and allowing the government to intimidate and silence civil society.[14] There have been unsuccessful efforts by previous governments to suspend or replace the PTA with rights-respecting legislation; however, the law still remains in effect, and even the law designed to replace it, the Anti-Terrorism Bill (ATB), while it has some improvements, continues to receive criticism over provisions which may enable abuses, including by Hizbullah himself, who has criticized it for being ad hoc and lawmakers for not having proper consultations on the bill.[15]  

The detention order against Hizbullah cited aiding and abetting the Easter Sunday bombers and for engaging in activities deemed “detrimental to the religious harmony among communities”, although there are no links connecting Hizbullah to the bombings.[16] Hizbullah was detained under the order until 3 March 2021 when he was finally charged, although he continued to remain in pre-trial detention for about another year.[17] As mentioned above, for the first eight months under the detention order, Hizbullah was denied access to legal counsel, and even after then he was only able to see his family and lawyer a few times and always in the presence of authorities.[18]

On 3 March 2021, Hizbullah was charged with “inciting communal disharmony” under the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights Act of 2007 for allegedly “advocating national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence”.[19] He was also charged under the Penal Code with conspiracy and aiding and abetting violence based on a speech he allegedly gave at Al-Zuhriya Arabic College in August 2018.[20]  Hizbullah has denied making the speech and has offered evidence that he was in another location at the time.

Hizbullah’s trial has already been marred by signs of judicial harassment and lapses of fair trial standards. Hizbullah was held in pre-trial detention for almost two years following his original arrest, and he was initially arbitrarily denied bail, a decision which was finally reversed on 7 February 2022.[21] This follows a pattern of other arbitrarily detained activists which were arbitrarily denied bail for long periods without evidence or charges, including the case of Ahnaf Jazeem mentioned above.[22]   

In particular, witnesses against Hizbullah have also been subject to threats, coercion, intimidation, and arrest. On 19 October 2023, a principal witness for the prosecution, Fowzan, admitted under cross examination that his statements to the CID and High Court that Hizbullah had given extremist lectures and militant training were fabricated, that no such activities had occurred, and that he had lied earlier.[23] However, the prosecution continued the trial. On the next trial date, 16 January 2024, a High Court judge involved in an earlier part of the case further testified in favor of Hizbullah, putting into question statements against Hizbullah by two minors (which had been improperly accompanied and likely pressured by lawyers retained by the CID) and a prosecution witness, Malik.[24] There have not been any public updates in English that could be found regarding the continuing proceedings from 26 July 2024.

ALN protests the continued arbitrary detention and failures of due process and fair trial standards that Hizbullah has faced and calls on Sri Lanka authorities to release him and other arbitrarily detained activists, to end discriminatory measures against ethnic and religious minorities in Sri Lanka, to implement effective measures to prevent and punish discrimination, and to repeal the PTA and ensure any replacement fully respects international human rights standards.

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[1] Hejaaz Hizbullah, X post, 17 May 2024, https://x.com/hejaazh/status/1791526320347767190.

[2] Amnesty, “On Hejaaz Hizbullah: The latest victim of Sri Lanka’s draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act”, 15 July 2020, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/07/sri-lanka-on-hejaaz-hizbullah-and-the-prevention-of-terrorism-act/.

[3] https://savethepearls.org/

[4] Lawyers for Lawyers, et al, "Joint statement on the ongoing trial of lawyer and human rights defenderHejaaz Hizbullah", 16 June 2023, https://lawyersforlawyers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Final-Joint-Statement-Hejaaz-Hizbullah-16062023.pdf.

[5] Amnesty, "End the Use of and Repeal the Draconian PTA", https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/ASA3752412022ENGLISH.pdf; HRW, "Sri Lanka: Repeal Draconian Security Law", 29 Jan. 2018, https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/01/29/sri-lanka-repeal-draconian-security-law.

[6] Amnesty, supra, note 2. The remainder of this paragraph references this source.

[7] HRW, "Sri Lanka: Authorities Target Religious Minorities", 28 July 2024, https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/07/28/sri-lanka-authorities-target-religious-minorities.

[8] Ranga Sirilal and Shihar Aneez, "Sri Lanka's hardline Buddhist monk walks out of jail after pardon", Reuters, 23 May 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/world/sri-lankas-hardline-buddhist-monk-walks-out-of-jail-after-pardon-idUSKCN1ST295/; Alan Keenan, " 'One Country, One Law': The Sri Lankan State’s Hostility toward Muslims Grows Deeper", ICG, 23 Dec. 2021, https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-asia/sri-lanka/%E2%80%9Cone-country-one-law%E2%80%9D-sri-lankan-states-hostility-toward-muslims-grows-deeper.

[9] HRW, supra, note 7; Hejaaz Hizbullah, Written Testimony, US Commission on International Religious Freedom,  https://www.uscirf.gov/sites/default/files/Hejaaz%20Hizbullah%20-%20Testimony.pdf.

[10] Amnesty, supra, note 2.

[11] Amnesty, "Sri Lanka: Student Leaders Arbitrarily Detained", https://www.amnesty.org.uk/urgent-actions/student-leaders-arbitrarily-detained; HRW, "Sri Lanka: End Use of Terrorism Law Against Protesters", 31 Aug. 2022, https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/08/31/sri-lanka-end-use-terrorism-law-against-protesters; Amani Nilar, "Lack of Evidence: IUSF Activist released after 50-days in detention", News 1st, 7 Oct. 2022, https://www.newsfirst.lk/2022/10/07/lack-of-evidence-iusf-activist-released-after-50-days-in-detention; Adaderana, "90-day detention orders issued on IUSF convenor and two others", 22 Aug. 2022, https://www.adaderana.lk/news/84461/90-day-detention-orders-issued-on-iusf-convenor-and-two-others; Peoples Dispatch, "Sri Lankan student activist Wasantha Mudalige released from prison", 2 Feb. 2023, https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/02/02/sri-lankan-student-activist-wasantha-mudalige-released-from-prison/.

[12] Amnesty, "Sri Lanka: Poet detained for one year without charge", 16 May 2020, https://www.amnesty.org.uk/urgent-actions/poet-detained-one-year-without-charge; Hizbullah, supra, note 9; Amnesty, "Sri Lanka: Letter to the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka on Ahnaf Jazeem", 1 July 2021,  https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa37/4355/2021/en/.

[13] Ambika Satkunanathan, X post, 29 Nov. 2023, https://x.com/ambikasat/status/1730211545622192392; HRW, "Sri Lanka: Tamils Detained for Commemorating War Dead", 6 Dec. 2023, https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/12/06/sri-lanka-tamils-detained-commemorating-war-dead.

[14] Amnesty, HRW, supra, note 5.

[15] HRW, "Sri Lanka: False Terrorism Cases Enable Repression", 17 July 2024, https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/07/17/sri-lanka-false-terrorism-cases-enable-repression; News First, "Draconian Laws & Oppressed People?" (Live Stream Interview with Hejaaz Hizbullah), The People's Platform, 4 Apr. 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0Q-k84O6Pg.

[16] Amnesty, supra, note 2.

[17] Lawyers for Lawyers, "Ongoing trial of Sri Lankan lawyer Hejaaz Hizbullah", 20 Nov. 2023, https://lawyersforlawyers.org/en/ongoing-trial-of-sri-lankan-lawyer-hejaaz-hizbullah/.

[18] Id.; Amnesty, supra, note 2.

[19] Lawyers for Lawyers, supra, note 17.

[20] Id.

[21] Lawyers for Lawyers, et al, supra, note 4.

[22] Amnesty, "Sri Lanka: Authorities must review all ‘terrorism’ cases after granting bail to Hejaaz Hizbullah", 7 Feb. 2022, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/sri-lanka-must-review-terrorism-cases-after-hejaaz-hizbullah-granted-bail/.

[23] Lawyers for Lawyers, et al, supra, note 4.  

[24] Id. Easter Attack Info, "2024.01.16- Case against Hejaaz Hisbullah (English)", https://easterattack.info/2024-01-16-case-against-hejaaz-hisbullah-2/.